Welcome to our 122nd issue of Artscope Magazine.
Over time, I’ve learned the value of photographs in telling history otherwise not available and as such, I’ve found myself protesting with well-meaning fans of performers and roadside landmarks on social media who enhance images they find or take with AI, and in the process, destroy the historical document.
Photographs and paintings might be our only way to learn of people, places and events of the past. A few weeks ago, after seeing images of war from the Middle East, I found myself stunned by their similarity with Frederick C. Yohn’s 1893 painting, “Siege of Yorktown,” that’s one of the highlighted works in “The American Revolution: A Story of the War in 28 Paintings” exhibition on view through July 4 at Historic Beverly’s Cabot House. It was a painful reminder that for all the societal and medical advances we’ve seen in our lifetime, we’ve not come up with an answer on how to stop wars.
As timely an exhibition as you could ever want, and need, Iranian photographer Azadeh Akhlaghi’s “From Iran: A Visual Testimony” opens on May 15 at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology. The show, previewed in this issue by J.M. Belmont, features 16 images in which
Akhlaghi, Belmont writes, “attempts to bring the conflict and beauty of her home country’s past into focus by creating 11 tableaux — three of which are presented in large-scale — each depicting a crucial event in modern Iranian history.”
Also looking backwards to inform the present, Pablo Delano’s “The Museum of the Old Colony” installation at the New Britain Museum of American Art, “unfolds as an experience that lingers long after you leave,” writes Lexie Gondek in reviewing the show. She reports that the show “abandons the conventional in favor of immersion, drawing the viewer into a single, unfolding environment” with images and sounds “converging to flood the senses with a narrative that is both unsettling and essential, the story of United States rule in Puerto Rico since 1898, that’s impossible to ignore.”
From a journalistic and historical perspective, I’ve been carefully watching the artwork of and imagery taken from gatherings and protests of recent years, from “Black Lives Matter” and the 2017 Women’s March on Washington (and its associated Pink Hat Project), to the January 6, 2021 Capitol Attack and the more recent “No Kings Day” to see which of these might carry a message that lasts through the decades, and, eventually centuries.
Recently, wanting to research the role of photography in documenting social movements of my lifetime, I ordered and received two powerful books by photographer Janine Wiedel that capture two social movements I crossed paths with while visiting London 40 plus years ago. “Life at the Fence: Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp 1983/4” (Image & Reality) features photographs and interviews capturing the participants of a historic gathering of the anti-nuclear, peace and women’s movements in one place to protest the acceleration of the nuclear arms race.
Wiedel’s “St. Agnes Place Squat” (rrbphotobooks) is a heartbreaking documentation of a South London community based in abandoned buildings for almost four decades that brought together people from a wide variety of cultures and places; she documented its final four years before the residents of self-made homes were forcibly evicted and the properties demolished in 2007.
In our first issue of the year, I profiled photographer Ricardo Barros and his ongoing efforts to document the movers and shakers in his current hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In this issue, Barros contributes a powerful portrait of Mari Saxon, a Russian-born conceptual photographer who attended Moscow Architectural Institute and who is now living with her family in Central Massachusetts. In his story, Barros notes, “Anything can happen there. And here, within the world we know, cultural differences between American and Russian children come into play.” As we were going to press, a Kickstarter campaign for her self-published “Book of Tales” that includes three fairy tales written in both Russian and English was headed for, hopefully, a successful printing. Her work graces the cover of this issue.
The first piece of this issue arrived in early March in the form of an email from Carolyn Wirth filled with excitement over two “world-class exhibits at the well-hidden Mead” Museum of Art at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts featuring multi-modal artist JooYoung Choi (“Adventures of the Quantum Soup Surfer”) and photographer Kwame Braithwaite (“Revolutionary Movements”). The final portion is the result of Wirth making a pre-opening visit to the Whistler House Museum of Art to receive a tour from director Sara Bogosian of its “200th Anniversary of Lowell Exhibition 2026” that can be seen through June 20.
Jamestown Art Center in Jamestown, Rhode Island is showcasing its area’s newer artists in its current exhibition, “NEXT,” which is reviewed by Sawyer Smook-Pollitt, editor of our bi-weekly email blasts! that supplement our magazine coverage. If you’re not already receiving it, sign up at artscopemagazine.com/email-blasts/. Smook-Pollitt also provides an update on the return of the Star Store, which has been an invaluable focal point for the New Bedford arts community.
There are a lot of great solo exhibitions on view this spring, including Erica Licea-Kane at ClipArt and Jenine Shereos at Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge in Western Massachusetts, both previewed by Marjorie Kaye. Madeleine Lord details how Sam Belisle created detailed background landscapes and foreground floral imagery in high color to address the natural world that he’ll be exhibiting at the Piano Craft Gallery in Boston’s South End.
Linda Sutherland campaigned to cover Sam Modder’s “Of All the Worlds We Could Have Dreamed” at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, New Hampshire as a bit of fresh air during a time of omnipresent America 250-themed shows. “This installation is massive — the ceilings are 26’ high and some of the elements – including columns of hair ties — reach all the way from floor to ceiling,” she wrote. I’m sure you’ll enjoy her story on Modder’s exhibition built on her character’s obsession with hair ties. “The narrative is wrapped around a Black woman who escapes her reality into a world populated by versions of herself: her body, her hair, her belongings.”
One name I’ve been seeing quite often over the past year is Fernando Fula; whether it’s at TAG: The Art Gallery in SoWa Boston or the Copley Society of Art, and New Art Center in Newton, or the Hopkinton Arts Center and JMAC Pop-up Gallery in Worcester, he’s a growing positive presence on the Massachusetts (and beyond) arts scene. Having seen them collaborate on a variety of platforms, TAG’s Claudia Fiks was an easy choice to ask to introduce Fula to a wider audience.
Libby Schoettle’s PhoebeNewYork has spent the past decade moving from light pole to light pole throughout Manhattan in poster, print and sticker form before being invited into cafes, galleries and now, museums, including the Newport Art Museum, where she’ll be part of its “Play/Pretend” exhibition that opens May 7 and continues through the end of next January. I “Cornered” her to talk about how Phoebe’s messages of self-strength gained establishment acceptance and soon, her own feature documentary film.
Another big city regular, the mannequin, gets a modern take through three Clark University students, DanteDiez, Simon Pinchbeck and Hoang Truong, who through their exhibition at Worcester’s Harold Stevens Gallery atWCUW explore, through the use of video, sculpture and photography, how through our cellphone we ourselves are becoming a “Mannequin,” only in somewhat human form.
As I’m sure you’re aware, a rise in oil prices has led to a rise in shipping costs and Artscope Magazine isn’t exempt from those charges. If you’re one of the hundreds of galleries, museums and art centers that we ship our magazine to as soon as it’s published every two months, and you have a regular clientele that comes in to get their free copy (and, hopefully spends time at your venue or business), please consider helping us with those costs. And those of you who go out to see exhibitions and artists after reading about them in one of our issues, please let them know that’s how you chose to visit on that day.
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